


Now I lay you down to sleep

by Sa_kun



Series: Wishlist '11 [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-31
Updated: 2011-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-28 14:10:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/308683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sa_kun/pseuds/Sa_kun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time a vengeful spirit tried to kill him, Snape saved his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now I lay you down to sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for all of Harry Potter. This is what I came up with for the prompt I was given. Maybe it wasn't what you were asking for, but I hope you like it anyway.

The first time a vengeful spirit tried to kill him, Snape saved his life.

* * *

After the war ended, Harry moved to a cottage in the woods. It was waterproof, had plumbing and electricity, but that was as far as the modern amenities stretched. It wasn't perfectly insulated, the windows weren't a perfect fit in their frames and he had a family of kneazels living in what had at one point been a shed. It was more resembling a pile of planks now, but the kneazels didn't seem to mind.

"No, you don't wanna do that."

Harry moved away from the window, his hammer clutched tight in his hand. "Why not?"

"See, the frame's instable. It'll be worth your money if you just switch them all out."

Harry stood back and contemplated that for a moment. Steve ran a hand through his bushy moustache, then gestured at the wood. "It's rotted through. If you just fix them up with silicon or insulation, you'll buy a few months, at most."

"Windows are kind of expensive."

"I ever tell you I buried a suitcase stuffed full of treasure in the Lake Districts?" a sleazy voice piped in.

"You want me to buy windows, using money I'd get for selling jewellery you stole twenty years ago?"

Freddy grinned. If circumstances were different, Harry was sure the two of them would've got along great. As it was, the back of Freddy's head was smashed in and he'd died when he was younger than Harry was today.

* * *

He'd been living in his cottage for two months before he realised that the only people he ever spoke to were the ghosts of the dead. He wrote letters to the living, and walked among the dead.

Hermione said it was unhealthy, Mrs Weasley worried and fretted, and Ron mostly ignored it all together.

Harry certainly never figured this would be the way he'd live his life after the war was over.

It wasn't so bad, all in all, but it could have been better. Snape had probably amassed more knowledge during the course of his life than even Hermione ever would. It was Snape who told him which books to read, Snape who told him to buy the dilapidated cottage Harry now called home, it was Snape who instructed him on how to reinforce it, and it was ultimately Snape who told him to cut his ties entirely to the world of the living.

It was just safer that way.

* * *

The first time Harry spent the night at the Burrow after the war ended, the furious vengeful ghosts almost burned the place down.

"Will you listen to me now, you foolish boy?"

Harry's body was still aching, bleeding from various cuts all over his body, bruises smarting and palm sized marks burning. "What's going on?"

"You're a death magnet."

"Because of the Hallows? I don't have them any more!"

Snape raised an eyebrow. "Because you died and came back. You crossed the void, Potter; it lingers on you and the pull is…strong."

* * *

So Harry bought his cottage, trusted Snape to keep the angrier ghosts and spirits who wanted to kill him for living away, when they _didn't_. He trusted Snape to keep him safe as he always had before, when he'd been alive.

There were three salt lines protecting his house, plus an additional one buried around the foundation of the house itself, and then yet another barrier to further separate the rooms from each other. He'd spent a while filling and attaching PVC conduits together in wide circles, filled the brim with salt. The friendlier ghosts had helped him, ghosts like Steve and Freddy, who'd stayed inside all the circles of salt, spells, charms, wards, runes and the consecrated iron.

* * *

"I cannot believe I'm doing this."

"It needs to be done, you said it yourself."

"How did you convince me again? I must confess, I _forget_ ," Snape sneered.

Harry rolled his eyes. "I promised you eternal rest, and you promised to hide it all from the others. Remember?"

"Those roots need to be finely chopped, not mutilated, Potter."

"I'm chopping them!" Harry snapped.

" _Finely_ ," Snape ground out.

* * *

With Snape's help, Harry constructed a labyrinth on All Hallows' Eve. In the centre he placed a large, shallow disk that had taken him weeks to hammer out and shape into the crude bowl that was now partially buried in the ground. The potion he poured into it had taken longer to brew than the disk had taken to create. Harry did his best not to look at it too long.

There was always a danger, Snape said, that the soul and spirit of the brewer formed an attachment with the potion.

The labyrinth was simplistic at best: one entrance and one exit. It was circular, wide at the beginning and narrowing towards the centre in ever decreasing circles. He'd made it out of PVC conduits filled with salt, then built mounds of stacked rocks and stones over them. The stones around the disk in the middle were smeared with his blood; to better attract the ghosts and keep pulling them in.

"I want to go," Steve said, standing at the entrance of the maze.

"Yeah," Freddy agreed, swaying with the breeze. "My sister's there."

"I had a wife."

It was strange, watching from the outside. The ghosts of his friends _blurred_. They weren't as clear or defined, and the closer to the centre, the more they resembled balls of light, almost like swarms of fireflies.

"You'll need to break the wards," Snape murmured, his dark eyes following the trek of the two ghosts.

"Yeah," Harry agreed, voice soft.

"Wait until midnight, then let them all in. The gateway to the other side will be thinnest. I doubt a ghost in all of the country will remain." Snape paused and smirked at Harry. "Unless they have undue attachment to this place, of course."

"Of course," Harry agreed with a wry laugh. "Will it be over, after this?"

"People die every year," Snape answered. "I doubt it will ever be over. Your magnetism might decrease over time, but whether it will completely vanish? I don't know."

Harry felt short of breath, but he'd sort of suspected. Snape had been a little too thorough in his instructions, a little too insistent Harry take notes and write the details down to Snape's exacting expectations. But after all this time, he'd sort of forgotten that…

He'd forgotten that Snape was _dead_.

"Will you see Mum, d'you think?"

For the first time that Harry could remember, Snape smiled. "I can already see her, Harry."

"Oh."

"You should be fine, this time, tomorrow," Snape murmured. Even though Steve and Freddy were both gone by now, Snape's eyes were still fixed on the centre of the labyrinth. "Release the wards at midnight. Break the salt lines. At dawn, repair them. Come back in a year."

"Yeah," Harry agreed. "Again and again."

"Yes."

Harry lifted a hand and sort of rested it against Snape's back. "Go on, then. Be happy."

Snape's smile remained, even as he turned to meet Harry's gaze one last time.

"Say hi? From me?"

Snape inclined his head. "I think I speak for all of us when I say that we will be most cross if you arrive a day before you're hundred."

Harry laughed, brittle and happy at the same time.

"I—" Snape cocked his head, as if he could hear something that was audible only to him. "You have made us all proud, Harry," he murmured.

Together, they walked to where the labyrinth started. There was a small protected circle there, just big enough for Harry to stand in. Harry stopped there, but Snape continued walking.

"I'll miss you, you great bat," he whispered to Snape's dissolving form.

* * *

At precisely midnight, Harry collapsed the wards and broke all the salt lines.

**Author's Note:**

> After the war, it's difficult for Harry to go on with his life, whether his work or his love life, because he can see dead people. They talk to him and comment his every move. Severus is either the main ghost (DH-compliant) or the man who will help him overcome these difficulties (EWE), by [larissa27](http://larissa27.livejournal.com).


End file.
